The team from Columbia University Medical Center in New York
City said their findings hold promise for the development of a
new treatment for type 1 diabetes that does not involve stem
cells.

For people with type 1 diabetes, their body's natural
insulin-producing cells, known as pancreatic beta cells, are
destroyed by their immune system. For the past 20 years,
scientists have been trying to help the body make new
insulin-producing cells that replace those that are lost to the
disease.

"The search for the 'holy grail' is to produce a source of
insulin producing cells either for transplantation or to
convert the body's own cells to make sufficient insulin," said
one expert, Dr. Derek LeRoith, professor of medicine and
diabetes at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New
York City.

Right now, "insulin injections must be used to replace this
lack in insulin production and release," said LeRoith, who was
not involved in the new research.

Insulin-producing cells have been created before using stem
cells, but these cells do not yet fully function like natural
insulin-producing cells, the Columbia research team
explained.

However, by simply turning off a particular gene, the
Columbia scientists were able to convert cells in the human gut
into cells that make insulin. They said the findings suggest
that "reeducating" existing cells may be an easier way to
replace the cells lost in type 1 diabetes than creating new
cells using stem cell technology.

"People have been talking about turning one cell into
another for a long time, but until now we hadn't gotten to the
point of creating a fully functional insulin-producing cell by
the manipulation of a single target," study senior researcher
Dr. Domenico Accili, a professor of medicine at Columbia, said
in a university news release.

Prior research conducted by the team at Columbia involving
mice revealed that intestinal cells could be turned into
insulin-producing cells. Insulin made by the transformed gut
cells was then released into the bloodstream and effectively
controlled the blood sugar levels in diabetic mice. The
research was subsequently confirmed by another team of
scientists.

The Columbia team's latest findings found this technique
also hold promise for the treatment of type 1 diabetes in human
cells.

In conducting the study, published online June 30 in
Nature Communications, the researchers re-created a
tissue model of the human intestine using stem cells. They then
retrained the gut cells to make insulin by turning off a
particular gene, known as the FOXO1 gene.

According to Accili's team, the genetically engineered cells
began emitting insulin in about a week. The study's authors
also pointed out that the cells only released the insulin in
response to sugar.

"By showing that human cells can respond in the same way as
mouse cells, we have cleared a main hurdle and can now move
forward to try to make this treatment a reality," Accili
said.

For his part LeRoith called the study "exciting."

"This study and others like it may form the basis of future
development of insulin producing cells that could be used in
'curing' type 1 diabetes," he said.

The research is very early, and laboratory studies don't
always translate into success in humans. However, the
researchers remain hopeful. Accili said that the next step in
developing a new type 1 diabetes treatment involves to find a
drug that can block the FOXO1 gene in the human gut.

More information

The American Diabetes Association provides more information
on type 1 diabetes.

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